At RecentChangesCamp earlier this month, I faced this paradox first-hand. On the one hand, I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to really get to know some of the excellent folks in the Wiki community who aren’t local to the Bay Area. On the other hand, I had some specific things I wanted to work on — namely SisterSites with Ward Cunningham and other Wiki developers and a YADIS implementation with the good folks at JanRain. Working on these projects meant breaking away from the larger group, popping open the laptop, and focusing on the work at hand. (K8S)

The paradox resolved itself to my satisfaction. I got both projects done. We implementedSisterSites in PurpleWiki and a bunch of other Wikis, and Brian Ellin and I wrote a YADIS library in Ruby. I met several interesting and cool people for the first time, including Brian, and, I got to know folks like Bayle Shanks a lot better. On the second night, after the conference party, I decided to go to the main ballroom to check my email, even though I was exhausted. The ballroom was empty at first, but about half an hour later, Bayle showed up. We had met at WikiSym, but this was the first time we had a chance to sit down and really talk, and we stayed up past 3am. That was excellent. I had already known that Bayle had done some cool stuff, but it was great to dig deeper into his ideas as well as to talk about non-Wiki stuff. (K8T)

I even got to discuss The Pete Paradox with Pete in person. (How’s that for meta?!) And here’s how I finally resolved it in my head. Both The Pete Rule and The Pete Paradox are about maximizing engagement. When you are working closely together, you are engaging in a way that is not only more productive, but more meaningful. Face-to-face time spent working can be a waste, but face-to-face time spent truly working together usually isn’t. (K8U)